Under Review

Concerns over the cancelled tutorial and complaints about a lack of overall coherence in the program come at a particularly significant moment for ESPP.

The University is now reviewing the five-year-old program, and the joys and the frustrations of bridging disciplines are coming to the forefront.

Christened in 1993 as an undergraduate concentration which would cut across out-dated departmental boundaries, ESPP operates under the Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) Department and has no permanent faculty of its own--and will not any time soon, Knowles said in an e-mail.

At the same time, the cross-departmental approach makes ESPP too pre-professional for some.

ESPP studies issues of ecology and the environment and the ways in which the law and economy interacts with them. The subjects ESPP covers have become hot topics in recent years, and after only six years, graduates of the program have already made their voices heard in America's environmental policy--but they have also raised their voices at the University, criticizing its handling of the program.

Many say the multidisciplinary aspect of the concentration is both the bane and the blessing of ESPP.

"I have mixed feelings towards the concentration," Kanter says. "I feel fortunate to have tried a lot of things because it's interdisciplinary."